Asking the dog

Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.

Mary Oliver, I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life

Sunday Quote: Our fears

Failure seldom stops you;

what stops you is the fear of failure

Jack Lemmon

Our reality as humans

The period between Good Friday and Easter Sunday shows us all the aspects of human life, from darkness to light:

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet

Whose hands can strike with such abandon

That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living

Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness

That the haughty neck is happy to bow

And the proud back is glad to bend

Out of such chaos, of such contradiction

We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

Maya Angelou, A Brave and Startling Truth

 

Passing mind states

When I experience difficult mind states that I cannot control, I know their source is in my own mind and that nothing happens externally. Even when a clearly external event has triggered the response of fear or sadness that has manifested as anger, it is essentially the grid of the mind that has shaped that responseKnowing that negativity or aversion is a transient energy never means to ignore it. It means to see it clearly, always, and work with it wisely.

Sylvia Boorstein

Sunday Quote: Looking at nature

We bundle up but trees go naked in winter.

Diane Ackerman, American poet and essayist

Fluidity

The best way to conduct oneself may be observed in the behaviour of water

Tao Te Chng VIII, 20